In a Name
by DigitalTart
Summary: By his reasoning, it's not really stealing if they're never going to use it again. Pregame Balthier and Fran.
1. Chapter 1

_SPOILERS through Archades, when Balthier's former occupation, familial ties, and given name are revealed._

* * *

Ffamran would have liked to say Prototype Vessel ISF-9A (as of 3 o'clock this morning, unofficially rechristened the _Strahl_), wassoaring through the cloudless, indigo sky, silent as a nighthawk over the Dalmascan sand. To his dismay, how it was actually flying could be likened more closely to a drunken seagull with a death wish. With the invisibility paling in place, limping past the Nabradia/Dalmasca border shouldn't have been insurmountably difficult, even with the thrusters on his left side half fried by a lightning spell from Draklor Laboratory's security systems. He was a gifted pilot…the best and youngest in the Judicial candidate pool. But his skills at the helm didn't make a lick of difference in this particular case—at the moment he was fighting time, and the fact he'd gone leagues past any vestige of civilization before detecting the sick-sweet scent of leaking coolant in the air.

If the ship was in bad shape, her ersatz captain was in worse. His stock of curatives had rendered his perforated shoulder usable again, if infernally stiff, but didn't do a thing for the headache building steadily behind his eyes, or the way his concentration wandered alarmingly from the task of keeping himself on course. He'd have to set down somewhere soon before he blacked out and rammed into a cliffside. There should be some kind of Dalmascan settlement not too far south. With a good engineer. He hoped. Otherwise his masterful plan to escape a father who was simultaneously insane enough to hold philosophical conversations with potted plants and cogent enough to maintain an iron grip on every aspect of his son's life was going to go to waste, and Ffamran did not like to waste.

In his two faces he had the perfect tools to craft his escape: Ffamran Bunansa had access to the raw materials, and Judge Hiraldhad the authority to use them. No one suspected conscientious, well-mannered Fframran of _anything (_really the entire problem with his life in the first place), which meant he could slip in and out of offices almost at will, a charming smile and the claim he was running errands for his father the only clearance needed. This was how he got copies of Judge Aran's signature, Draklor's overseer, and the appropriate blank requisition forms. Every time he set pen to paper to practice the forgery, it sent a thrill through him—the penalty for impersonating a Judge Magister was death.

The weeks of planning done and the forms in hand, he donned the scowling steel visage of a newly titled Judge and strode authoritatively into the lab hangar at an unholy hour of the morning to demand the stealth tech prototype for a "covert mission" of extreme importance to the integrity of the Empire. The desk toad waved him through without a fuss…and that's where things unraveled. He had made the almost fatal mistake of underestimating the human capacity for pure, unadultered stupidity. The clerk was drunk on duty, and in his inebriated haze failed to inform the hangar guards they would have a visitor. What Ffamran had hoped to make a quiet affair got much too interesting much too fast—an all-out, sirens-blazing gunfight, which he, by a span of luck exactly two and one-half inches above his heart, had won.

He'd never been shot before, nor, for that matter, had he ever shot anyone. Pulling the trigger had been easy—he'd plugged enough drones and constructs at the academy it was second nature. Drones, however, do not scream in agony. The first to fall by his pistol was not a perpetrator of blackest villainy but some underpaid soldier in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whether he survived, Ffamran would probably never know. His stomach felt suddenly queasy. Whether it was a belated attack of conscience or advanced hypoxia was up for debate.

"If you want to be a sky pirate, you're going to be putting a lot of holes in your fellow men," he whispered to himself. "And no one will take you seriously if you're sick afterward."

The attempts to scrub the scene from his brain met with little success; there was nothing to distract him but sand, sky, and the possibility of his own impending demise.

-----

The farther he flew, the harder it was getting to keep his eyes open. When he saw the first pinprick of light, he was half afraid it was a dream, but after pinching hard into the skin of his hand and it was still there. He pounded on the radio to broadcast on all frequencies: "Request…requesting clearance for immediate…immediate...uhhnn…hell. I need to get this bloody thing on the ground."

"Request granted, unidentified vessel. Green spots are the perimeter of the landing pad, lock on to those. I've gotta say—you don't sound so good. Sparkdust Mine settlement out."

Thank all the gods there was an automated landing sequence on this thing. He punched in the proximity targets and let the ship do his flying for him, normally unthinkable, but in his present state he would have ended up burying her nose in the ochre dust. In a few minutes, the ship settled into the dry earth with a satisfying crunch. When he rose, the deck felt as if it were bucking beneath his feet, rather odd, considering he was now on the ground. Also, what had been a single green button next to the hatch were now two and had begun dancing back and forth in a most irritating fashion. He succeeded in smacking the right one, but only just, since it was right after he stepped out into the moonlight that his entire field of vision faded to black.

A rough, cool hand caught him around the shoulders before he could kiss the gangplank. "Steady there, steady there! You hurt? That would be rotten luck—no Hume doctors around for miles," its owner said.

"No…not hurt. Coolant," he mumbled. The air was freezing, and the most delicious thing he had ever tasted in his life. The black miasma retreated further the deeper he breathed, and behind it was a rusty Bangaa who had advanced enough in years his snout and eye ridge had faded to dusky peach.

The old Bangaa raised his nose and sampled carefully. "Tch. I can smell it. Sit yourself down and get some air," he said, and pulled him away to a stack of wide crates.

"Here," he said, and put a tiny phial in his hand. "Good for what ails you." Ffamran knocked it back without hesitation, and the cotton fuzz cleared from his head almost immediately. His rescuer set off to pace slowly around the ship while he lay back on the prickly boards and renewed his acquaintance with readily available oxygen.

"Looks like someone nipped your tail good, boy. Get into a tiff with the bucketheads, did we?" he asked, once he'd circled back round to stand in front of the stack.

Ffamran levered himself up on his elbows and thanked every bit of superstitious nonsense he could think of he'd decided to shuck the tin can he'd been wearing and jettison it somewhere over the Salikawood. "Aye. Don't suppose you have someone around who could repair their handiwork?"

"Maybe, maybe. I'll need to have a look-see when the light's better. You have, ah, compensation, I hope?"

"My gil is Imperial stamp, but there's enough of it."

"Gil is gil is gil," he said, waving his hand dismissively. "A boy with a full purse and trouble with the Judges. I think I like you already. Name is Arturus, by the way. Tell you what: the last of the clutch shipped out to Nalbina this spring, so we've an extra room. It's yours for the night, free of charge. "

"Your offer is most welcome, but must you address me as 'boy'? I'm hardly a child."

"Is that so. How many summers have you put behind you, then?

"Twenty-two," he said, inflating the real figure by half a decade.

"And I'm at one-hundred and nineteen, so I'll call you boy as I please until you've gone gray. Home is in the ravine. This way."


	2. Chapter 2

The small house, built into the rock itself, was empty by the time he awakened, the hour impossible to guess due to its lack of windows. It wasn't really more than a hovel; all the furnishings were dusty and worn just short of the point of collapse. On the kitchen table was a covered plate of bread, soft cheese, and a wrinkled, brownish fruit obviously intended for his breakfast. They looked barely able to feed themselves, never mind look after a stranger. How odd these Dalmascans were. Kind, but odd.

Cleaned up and fed, he unlatched the front door to find himself in Hell. The dust found its way into his eyes and mouth after scarcely a breath. The heat was so thick it choked—it felt like breathing_ light_. "Holy…" he gasped, and slammed the thick door shut. He had known in the abstract sense Dalmascan summers were hot, every schoolchild does, but it did not prepare him for the sun stabbing clear through his eyes into his brain. There was nothing for it but acceptance. He was a wanted man in Archadia by now—its summer rain showers were a world way, and would be for a long time to come. What were a few luxuries in comparison to his freedom?

He took a deep breath of the relatively cool air underground and set out again for the _Strahl_. He found his rescuer already at the ship, who strolled out to meet him when he heard Ffamran's footfalls on the hardbaked mud. "There you are! You gave us a bit of a scare. The wife and I were afraid you weren't going to wake again."

"Afraid I wasn't going to wake? By the look of the sun it's barely ten in the morning," he said, glancing up in puzzlement.

"Oh, tis. The day _after_ you dropped out of the sky. But you look well enough now, and it gave us time enough to put your ship back together."

"That was quick work."

"Wasn't all me. Wasn't even mostly me," he said, chuckling. "Still looks a mess with all the scorch marks, I know, but she tells me it should be flyin' true as Raithwall's arrows now. Would you like to meet the hands behind it?"

"I'd be delighted to meet your…mechanic." From the looks of it, this was a Bangaa mining town. The woman who slid herself out from underneath the thruster casing was not a Bangaa. If she had been dressed in something other than a dirty apron and a welder's face shield, he would have no difficulty picturing her lounging on silken cushions and sipping rare vintages aboard a pleasure cruiser. She paid him no heed while she pulled off the protective gear that bound her hair safely away from stray sparks, and when the snowy fall was freed, along with two perfect black-speckled coney's ears, he could not help but stare.

Finally she seemed to notice his presence. "Have you never seen a Viera before?" she asked, eyes narrowed.

The truthful answer would have been 'not outside the pages of a geography textbook', but how far could an aspiring sky pirate get on the truth? "Your pardon," he replied, inclining his head by way of apology. "I've met a few, but most Viera haven't a taste for carbon steel and engine grease."

"I am not like most Viera."

"Obviously not," he said, wondering if her face was capable of forming a more pleasant expression than faintly insulted disdain. That bit of fantasy seeped quickly downward into imagining what she looked with a more pleasant expression while naked. It wasn't difficult. Under the canvas apron, she wasn't wearing much in the first place.

"Shall we proceed with pre-ignition testing?" she asked, her voice flat with barely concealed irritation.

"Of course, " he said, extending a hand up by way of invitation. She didn't waste any time in brushing past him onto the ramp. All business, it seemed. Rather dull for so pretty a woman, but they'd only just met. "I'm afraid I never caught your name...?" he called up after her.

"Fran," she tossed back, pointedly refraining to ask for his.

"That's what I like about Humes," said Arturus, who had watched the entire exchange with a faint smirk on his face. "You turn all sorts of interesting colors when you're worked up over something. Like right now--you're all funnily pinkish in the cheeks."

"I am not."

"To be honest…no, at that particular moment you weren't. But you certainly are now."

Ffamran rolled his eyes and followed Fran up the gangplank. He was not blushing. He was _not._

-----

As frigid as her manner was, the woman was a mechanical genius. She'd patched and bypassed damaged circuits with junked heavy machinery scrounged up from around the camp. The power levels weren't as high as they could be, but the fact they were operating above fifty percent capacity was a miracle in itself. "Time for the big show," he said to her over to intercom. "All clear from the engine room?"

"Yes. Go ahead."

He turned the key. There was a bang. Fran screeched. After that followed a string of thumps and angry hisses, which Ffamran guessed (rightly) were the rough Vieran equivalent to "contrary esper-blasted rusteaten whore's whelp of a ship."

"You all right down there, Fran?"

No answer.

"Fran?"

Nothing.

Was she hurt? It was hard to tell exactly what happened through the com, but something definitely blew out, and the power levels had plunged accordingly. Just as he was about to run to her rescue, the darkened control panel flickered back to life.

"Try it now," came the toneless voice over the radio.

"Are you sure you're all right?"

"Fine," she said in a voice so unmistakably icy the tone made it all the way through the fuzz of the radio. He shrugged and twisted the ignition peg again. This time the rings spun up sweet as honey, and the test flight around the small encampment went as well as it possibly could. She'd done it.

He set the _Strahl_ down again and leaned back into the chair cushions. Life was looking good again. Fran ducked under the bulkhead behind him (gods she was tall) and leaned into the cockpit. "Is it acceptable?"

He craned his neck over the headrest and grinned at her. "Better than acceptable. Your work should hold for a long while. Would you care to test it yourself?"

"Not particularly," she said, and came a few steps farther in to lean against the doorframe. "You…stole this ship, didn't you?"

"Certainly not," he said, affronted. "One steals a loaf of bread. The _Strahl_ I commandeered."

"And you flew it all the way from Draklor Laboratories with malfunctioning directional thrusters, by _yourself_?

"I'm a better pilot than I look, eh?" he preened.

"Perhaps, but my first thought was that you were soft in the head."

He opened his mouth to thank her for the compliment he was expecting, but nothing came out. She was perhaps the rudest woman he had ever had the (dis)pleasure of conversing with. Nobody in Archades dared to speak to him in such a manner. Nobody.

"I don't believe you ever told me your name."

"I'm…Balthier," he said. It was the first thing that rolled off his tongue, and coincidently the name of the leading man in a series of novels of dubious historical accuracy favored by impressionable Archadian youths with a taste for vicarious adventure. Damn. At least she wouldn't know that. Next time he introduced himself he'd have to think of a better alias.

"And where do you make for?"

"I'm still pondering my options."

"Word among the cloudskippers is that there is royal coin for such enterprising individuals as choose to harry Archadian convoys."

"Is there _really_."

"So it has been said," she said, and paused for a long moment. "I have a proposition for you, Balthier—if that is your name, which I doubt. I have been stranded here for some weeks. In return for passage on the _Strahl_, I will serve as first mate until we reach Rabanastre, and find you landing clearance, which you do not have."

"I would not be able to secure this clearance by myself, I take it?"

"You are an Archadian citizen piloting a stolen vessel. Without the assistance of staggeringly large bribes, it is highly unlikely."

"Fair enough," he said. Not like he had much choice. He'd stashed away a fair amount of gil, but it had to last a long time, at least until piracy became profitable. "This makes me captain, doesn't it," he said to himself. Captain. That sounded terribly sweet to his ears. He could see the scene spread out before him: a dashing privateer, answering to no one, with a rifle on his back and a dark, exotic beauty at his side…

"But I will _not_ be taking orders from you. And Balthier?" she said, bending low over his shoulder until her gossamer hair brushed his arm. "If you lay a finger on me during this journey, I will not hesitate to relieve you of it, nor any other cherished pieces of your anatomy. Know, also, that I am not a woman in the habit of making idle threats."

He couldn't help but shift uncomfortably in his seat after she'd stalked away. This Fran had now bypassed 'rude' and edged over into 'criminally insane'. Whatever else set her apart from her Viera sisters, she shared their reputation for being violently unsociable (who were also said to be inhumanly strong and skilled with a wide array of spells and armaments). Maybe it would be better to rework scene one. Second draft: A dashing privateer, answering to no one, with a rifle on his back and the dark, exotic beauty as far away from him as possible.


End file.
